Some people have read the first (rough) draft and told me it's borrowing heavily from some fantasy story or another that I actually haven't read. I've read almost nothing in the genre, to tell you the truth. What I'm setting down now is a world I've tinkered with in my mind since I was in junior high school and am only now making a serious effort at bringing to reality. If you read it and think, "He's ripping off _____," well, yeah, I probably am, but not intentionally. There are a lot of themes and plot elements that are common to the genre, I think, or even to literature in general, but to me, characters and storytelling make a story good. I'm confident I've got some great characters; the question is, can I tell a story?
So this is Chapter One of Draft Two of what, for now, I'm calling Legends. What you will eventually, long down the road, pick up off the shelf of your local bookstore will most likely bear little resemblance to what you'll read here, but at least you'll be able to tell your friends you got in early. ;)
Before you get started, a quick key of unfamiliar terms:
Time: An Arcoan year is comprised of 180 days, divided into four seasons (Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter) each 45 days long. An Arcoan day is 24 hours long, and a day is considered to begin at sunrise. Thus, all measurements in years are understood to be slightly more than double their earthly counterparts; a man who has seen 100 winters would be understood to be age 50 to our understanding (actually 49.3).
Age: The construct "seen X winters" is near-universal in Arcoa when telling a person's age, analogous to the American "is X years old". The average human lifespan in Arcoa is the same as Earth's roughly 70 Earth years/145 Arcoan years, though Healers are known to live quite a bit longer.
Measurement: The moyre is almost two feet, actually 22 inches; the mamoyre is 1000 moyres, about one-sixth of a mile (.17 miles, to be exact). Long distances are most often measured in day's journeys; a day's journey is roughly considered to be 150 mamoyres (about 25 miles).
Weight, for right now, is just given in pounds in the few instances in which I need to give specific weights. I'll probably devise an arbitrary weight system later.
Oh, and before you ask: Yes, there's a reason the Lubyan lords have distinctly English names, and it's not merely my laziness. Arcoa and Earth share a nebulous connection, as we'll begin to see shortly.
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Belmon Lacla was the name his father gave him, but decades had gone by since last anyone had called him so. He called himself the Drifter, and for thirty years he had traveled all over Arcoa, from one town to the next to the next. As far as he could remember, two years was the longest he had stayed in the same place since he left his hometown; on a few occasions he was nicely asked to leave, on a few others driven out with torches and pitchforks, but usually he left of his own accord before it came to that. Kids loved him, loved to listen to the stories he would tell, but the general consensus among the adults of the world was that the Drifter was a wandering troublemaker that come to a town to snatch away its children, if allowed to. Arcoa was running out of corners he could rest in for even a little while.
But did that matter anymore? Surely it did not. The Drifter chuckled to himself as he peaked another of the long, gentle hills that marked the boundaries of the Plains of Elzareth. He wouldn't be venturing into the Plains on this occasion, but the Drifter three times had crossed the plains alive, and that was a feat most men, even those of Tuaisosopo and the Four Kingdoms, would never be able to claim. But then, he'd always had a knack for staying alive. How many times had he eluded death's cold fingers?
For two months he had ridden west, every day west and southwest, and for a wonder he hadn't stopped for more than a single night in any town or village. He had a good horse under him that he had borrowed without permission from a nobleman's ranch in Randle El, near its border with the Highlands. No one had detected his presence in the slightest, and the heist had taken place in the middle of the day; as far as any of the poor stablehands, now condemned to punitive ditch digging for probably a year or more, knew, the horse was in its stall one moment and gone the next. A man with the Drifter's talents could have made a thief to be remembered for ages to come for his exploits, but the notion of taking up a life of thievery had never really crossed the Drifter's mind. The dark brown horse's name was Chalice, and the Drifter had taken him because he had needed him; no reason less, or more. He didn't make Chalice sprint, but the horse rode at a trot for hours on end, day after day, bringing the Drifter across the continent about as quickly as it could be done without killing a horse or three.
The Navanor Icon was a mythical relic that had been whispered about among scholars for millennia and utterly forgotten by most of Arcoa. Forged from a supernatural stone that was so white it seemed to glow, and so strong nothing any man could do to it, not even a blow from the sharpest axe swung by the strongest man, could so much as chip it, the Icon was created by Brozen the White himself, with the aid of two of his fellow High Mages, Randals the Red and Aprile the Blue, if you believed the few surviving legends from crumbling books thousands of years old.
Whether the Icon existed, or whether it was just a tall tale from the age of an ancient war that seemed full of them, was a question that sparked no small excitement in Arcoa's academia. And even among those who believed it did exist, sparking yet greater contention was the question of whether it served the purpose a few of the oldest legends claimed it did. Some murmured that the Icon was itself the very lock that secured the seal keeping Ryth the Black trapped in the void, the nether realm into which the High Mages had thrown him just as he stood on the precipice of unsurpassable power and unchallenged rule over all Arcoa. Not too many believed such an extreme tale, but some said the Icon was an object into which Brozen and the High Mages channeled great power, and if it were ever to be found, the one who found it would obtain for himself greater power than any magician in centuries, maybe millennia. The High Mages' successors still existed in the world, of course, though no White High Mage had been known in a thousand years, but it was thought that their powers were only a shadow of their predecessors'. It had become popular in many places to hold that the Icon existed, but had no powerful significance; it was simply a handsome piece of art.
Wars had been fought over less than a handsome piece of art, but 4,500 years ago one appalling catastrophe of a war had been fought over the Navanor Icon. Given the level of ruin that struck such a large part of the continent, it was little surprising that complete records of the period were hard to come by and accessible only to the elite. Those records said that Brozen the White left the Icon in the trust of the queen of Chiara-Valhomana, the most magnificent of the ancient nations, an empire that far predated the Age of Darkness and fought Ryth the Black tooth and nail throughout the War, fought him until he brought her to the brink of utter destruction before Ryth was defeated in mankind's final desperate assault at the Battle of Sarcim. After the Victory of the Mages, as it was known, the queens of Chiara-Valhomana slowly, over hundreds of years, rebuilt the realm into her former glory. Chiara-Valhomana was universally acclaimed by the few surviving records as the crown jewel of the nations, and to this nation was charged the duty of keeping the Navanor Icon secret and safe.
To the Ever-enlightened, Pirslaea the daughter of Esatell the Queen, this day I lay to your charge the vanguard of free Arcoa, this Icon of Navanor, created with the agony toil of our own arms and minds, the High Mages. May the just kingdom of Chiara-Valhomana stand strong and tall, light to all living for as long as our world shall shine her light in the heavens, and may the Icon rest its long rest until the day of our reckoning come. These were the words of Brozen the White on the day he gave the Icon to the old Queen.
Brozen did not get his wish. For five hundred years the queens of Chiara-Valhomana, who assumed the title of the Guardian of Navanor and took it very seriously, kept it hidden deep in an underground chamber that only the queen and the captain of her honor guard knew. When destruction came, many thought it was the very day of reckoning of which Brozen had spoken; many terrified souls believed Ryth had broken loose from his imprisonment.
It wasn't Ryth that destroyed Chiara-Valhomana and burned every speck of her capital city of Nusbel Chiara to ashes. That was done by the armies of the Highlands, sworn to the Empress Derona and under the command of the Overlord Shikaa Linfazal, who was unparalleled in his brilliance on the battlefield and went into legend for the endlessness of his viciousness. Linfazal left no stone upon another on his path as he drove the Highland Forces across the river and south into Chiara-Valhomana. When he took a town, he took every last woman and child and forced the captured men to watch as his captains slaughtered their wives and children, one by one. When a town resisted him with particular stubbornness, he made sure to make them scream well before they died.
Linfazal laid siege to Nusbel Chiara for nearly four years, and did so with even more than his customary ruthlessness. Anyone that so much approached the city was killed without pause, dismembered, his or her entrails thrown over the walls of the city. The Valhomanan army in those days was large and strong, and they held their city for as long as they could, until starvation finally weakened them too much. When the Highland Forces broke through—the legends claim Shikaa Linfazal himself was the first man to step into the city, and joined combat with dozens of waiting Volhomanan soldiers—what followed was the greatest mass slaughter Arcoa had ever seen, unsurpassed even by Ryth the Black's many atrocities.
And then Linfazal left. He came to one of the world's most flourishing cities and left behind mamoyres of gore and not one breathing thing. If any reason for the annihilation of most of the queendom existed, it was lost to history. For hundreds of years piles of bones lay piled and scattered over a charred, barren field where Nusbel Chaira once stood, only very slowly being scattered abroad by rains, winds and animals. The area was called Tanuto'om, the Land Where Agony Reigns. The Navanor Icon vanished, to become the subject of countless prophecies, myths, tales and rumors, but never to be seen again. It was assumed by the few who wrote histories of the era that the Icon was the entire reason for the Highlanders' invasion, but if Linfazal left Tantuto'om with the Icon, the secret of its location died with him and Empress Derona.
For 4,500 years the Navanor Icon lay hidden, unknown to all the world, and faded into history, and then myth. The Drifter found it not only a very long way from civilization, but in a place no normal man would have thought to look, for the Icon or anything else. At a certain spot, a seventy degree bend in the Apar River two hundred mamoyres into its swath through the Sledge Mountains, where the river ran some twenty moyres deep, there lay a tunnel, hardly large enough to a man to squeeze through and fifty moyres long, submerged that led to a cave. No known man passed within thirty mamoyres of this spot until the Drifter, who went directly to the cave and retrieved the Navanor Icon from the very pedestal upon which it had been left four millennia ago.
The Drifter left his horse two hills short of the perimeter of the small and extremely well hidden camp, where clearly some very experienced soldiers, thieves or fugitives were about to go to sleep for the night. Soldiers, in point of fact they were, old soldiers, and very skilled soldiers; the thought, not his own, entered the Drifter's head as he pondered who he was approaching. The man in black keeping watch was serious trouble; in all, this was not only a group of men even trained searchers would be frustrated finding, but a group only a fool would want to find. Dangerous, dangerous, was the word that kept repeating itself in the Drifter's brain. Not that he had anything to fear; many years had gone by since last he really feared anything.
He followed a thin line, almost invisible, along the bottom of the hill and through trees that you recognized only on the third or fourth look as standing arranged in a straight line. He would need to meet the assassin straight on; surprise him and he might plant a knife in your head first and check on who you are second. He made sure the assassin saw him coming a good way off, and indeed a short sword had materialized in the assassin's left hand and a throwing knife in his right by the time the Drifter got close enough to see his hands. Had he not known precisely where he was, he would never seen the assassin until long after it was too late, and it wasn't even night yet; twilight had just begun to fall over the forests of Gerson.
The Drifter raised his hands, palms toward the assassin so he could see he held no weapon. “I carry a sword that I am not holding,” he said in a voice just loud enough to be made out by a man with excellent hearing, which the assassin was. “Besides, I hold no weapon.”
“Be on your way,” said the assassin, standing tall and straight, a viper poised to strike at the slightest provocation.
“My way brings me to you,” said the Drifter. “I need to speak with Lords Wilson and Williams.”
“Lie down.”
“I will not.”
The assassin had his short sword pressed to the Drifter's throat faster than he could blink. “Get down,” he said in a more menacing tone.
“No,” the Drifter responded just as firmly. “And you will not search me.”
For a long moment the assassin remained frozen. Finally he pulled back his sword. “Wait right on this spot,” he said, and vanished.
The assassin didn't return; two minutes later, Wilson and Williams themselves appeared. They both were men of about a hundred years, with full heads of similarly dark brown hair, though Williams' was mostly gray where Wilson's was not; the Drifter knew at a glance which was which. Williams was a man of normal size with a hawk's sharp, penetrating eyes and an almost dangerous intelligence that he exuded just from the way he stood. His companion, Wilson, was the biggest man the Drifter had ever seen: Nearly four moyres tall, and not just tall, but breathtakingly built, his tight shirt doing little to hide arms like cedar logs. He had to be more than two moyres from shoulder to shoulder. He towered a full moyre over Williams and the Drifter, and where Williams' face was stern and creased with hard lines, the giant's was a less severe visage, with a look as though he was chuckling to himself over some private joke that came through even his present suspicious attitude.
Wilson looked him over. “What's a Highlander doing by himself in the Four Kingdoms?” he said in a voice that managed to seem loud even though Wilson was keeping it toned down.
“Are we three by our lonesome here?” the Drifter asked.
“Makes no difference to you, friend,” said the giant. “I've not laid eyes on you in my life that I can recall... Lord Williams?”
“We've never seen him before.” Williams' eyes were bolted to the Drifter's in an almost unnatural gaze.
“And you ask for us by name,” Wilson continued. “I was just getting ready to go to sleep, but I'm staying up to chat with you because I'm anticipating a very good story. Please, don't disappoint me. Now, you appear to know our names. What's yours?”
“I have no name,” he said, breaking his eyes away from Williams'. “Call me the Drifter. That's the name I go by.”
Williams frowned, and then he and Wilson looked at each other for a moment.
“That is a most unusual name to answer to,” said Williams. “How did you find this camp?”
“I don't know, my lord,” the Drifter said. “I just know things. I have ridden west from the Sledge Mountains for two weeks, and as I entered the Four Kingdoms, I became aware of the need to seek you out. It's difficult to explain and inevitably results in my being taken for mad, but things come to me, things like who and where you are. I came to show you this. You are the first men besides myself to see it.” He opened his waist pouch and removed a heavy round object a little smaller than a man's head, rather the size of a large melon.
Williams took it and held it a little above his head, peering intently at it. He frowned. “Wilson,” he said, “would you get your battle ax?”
Wilson stole a glance at the Drifter as he turned away. “Be right back.” He went off into the darkness and returned a minute later with the biggest battle ax the Drifter had ever seen, a convex blade the size of a man's entire torso mounted on the end of a two and a half moyre staff, with half-moyre spikes adorning both ends of the staff. He looked at the Drifter again and then addressed Williams. “This for him?”
Williams shook his head. He walked about ten paces away and set the round object on a tree stump. “Destroy it,” he said to Wilson. “If you can.”
Wilson gave Williams a bewildered glance and then complied. The Drifter smirked, knowing what was coming, as Wilson hoisted his battle ax far up in the air and then brought it down on the globe with awesome force. The moyre-broad blade struck the globe with a dull thud and Wilson jumped into the air as if shocked by lightning.
“Ouch!!” the giant screamed. He instantly dropped the ax and shook his hands violently. “What the devil?”
Williams picked up the object, looked it over again, and then held it out toward Wilson. “Do you know what this is?”
Wilson finally got the tingling out of his hands enough to take it, and held it up with his fingers, palm up, despite its considerable weight. “Yeah,” he said at length. “I want to throw up, but I know what this is. It's the bloody Navanor Icon.” The Icon bore not a scratch from a blow that could have split a boulder in two.
Williams blinked away his astonishment and looked carefully over the Drifter. “The Drifter,” he said. “You must tell me, Drifter: What brought you to us?”
“I told you once all I know,” said the Drifter. “The knowledge came to me, from whence I know not, of the place where this Navanor Icon has been lying these millennia; and once I recovered it, the demand came to me to ride southwest, toward Sale Souel. This I did, and as I entered into the Forests of Gerson I found myself drawn to this very spot as a moth to a flame. Your names came to me, Lord Williams and Lord Wilson, the last lords of Lubyland, camping in a secret spot, with a very dangerous assassin standing watch. Hokela, his name is; that just came to me now, and I did not know it a moment ago.”
“Stark raving lunatic,” Wilson said. “Do the moons do this to him?”
“As soon as I found you, I knew I was to give the Icon to you, and I know you will give it back to me,” the Drifter finished.
“Give it back?” Wilson exclaimed. “So you can do what with it?” Williams remained silent, staring intently at the Drifter.
“Destroy it,” said the Drifter, “in the only way it can be destroyed. I will take it into the heart of the Black Mountains and cast it into the Pit of Shada, and thus will the seal be broken.”
Wilson, properly astonished at what blasphemy he was hearing, opened his mouth to speak once, closed it, opened it again, closed it again, and looked at Williams. Williams, still beholding the Drifter, glanced at him for only a brief moment, and then addressed the Drifter. “We will keep the Icon for now. Remain outside the camp for a time. Enter the camp and find us when it comes to you that you should find us.”
“Of course,” said the Drifter. “It's done, just as you say.”
Williams cocked his head to indicate Wilson to follow and vanished into the rapidly darkening night.
The exiled lords sat on the ground near where their small campfire was supposed to have been and leaned back against a small hill. Williams lit a lamp and set it on the ground, and set the fabled Navanor Icon, unseen by men's eyes for over four thousand years, beside it. “What's on your mind, Williams?” the giant asked.
“Too much,” said Williams. His hard face, creased with several deep wrinkles and the left cheek crossed with a scar healed long ago, betrayed the one hundred and two winters he had seen. His face looked its age, but he had an eagle's eyes, and his body was as fit as a man half his age. Now he stared through the Icon in his contemplations. “What are you minded to do with this situation?”
“Ryth, I can't make up from down right now,” Wilson said. “Whatever arm or leg of Fate sent this Drifter to us with this relic, I think we'd better make sure to put it someplace where it won't be found for another four thousand years, at the least.” He paused. “Do you think it sinks?”
“I'm troubled,” said Williams, “because he spoke so openly of his intent to... shatter the Icon. You know where you've heard about the shattering of the Icon.”
“Ryth, yes,” said the giant. “Is he a fool? He could walk into any village in Arcoa and say that and have his head taken off where he stood.”
Williams sat silently for a while yet, and Wilson said no more. Finally Williams said, “Wilson, it must be shattered. The time has come.”
Wilson sat in shock with his mouth open like a fish. “You didn't just say that. My friend since birth did not just say that.”
Williams stared at the ground. “The Creator forgive me for what I do,” he said, “but you know as well as I what's been handed down among us. Darkness must fall; evil must conquer. Wilson, we see it all around us. Everywhere we go we find greater greed, lust, hate. Lubyland is lost to us. At this rate the Omega will sweep over half the continent before we draw our last breaths.” He drew an especially heavy breath just then. “The shards of the Icon shatter the gate. The blood of the Ruuben marks Lubyland's fate,” he quoted.
“You aim to break the Icon to cause Ruuben to appear,” Wilson said.
“Do you interpret our prophecy in some other way?” Williams asked quietly. “In the Age of Darkness Lubyland plunged Arcoa to its doom. In the Age of the Ruuben she will lift Arcoa on her shoulders to triumph over the Black Ones. Is this not the very belief upon which we have staked our lives?”
“It's the greatest gamble the world has ever seen,” rumbled Wilson. “You want to bet all Arcoa's fate on double Whites and throw the dice?”
“It is out of our hands,” said Williams. “We are the dice.”
Wilson shrugged. “All right. You've always been the conservative one; I've always been the guy to break something first and worry about the consequences later. You want to do this? You want to be known as Riscarl Williams, the man who released the Six Evils and the Black power on Arcoa? Then Ryth, let's do it. There's nothing to lose but our souls and the eternal torment of everyone in the world.”
A man unfamiliar with Lord Wilson would have assumed he was being sarcastic, but not so. Williams, taking in his friend's words, leaned in to whisper for the giant's ear. “If what I suspect is so,” he whispered very quietly, “and the Drifter is indeed the same Drifter of the legends, he will appear before us three seconds after I stop whispering just now. Count to three now.” Wilson ticked off three seconds in his mind, and the Drifter approached from Williams' left. Wilson looked at Williams.
“I swear on my grave, I never saw him,” Williams said in answer to the unspoken question.
“It's settled, then,” the Drifter said rather than asked.
“Camp with us tonight,” said Wilson as he stood with a silent nod to his companion. “In the morning we will set out for the Black Mountains.”
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